5 YouTube Tricks You Probably Never Knew Existed

Since its launch way back in 2005, YouTube has taken the internet world by storm. While many other video-playing sites have since popped up, they are nowhere close to the level of viewership of YouTube. Over a billion different users visit the site every month. But you know that already. You know already how to upload, share, like, comment, favorite. Some of you more advanced watchers even know how to turn off annotations, turn on captions, adjust video quality, change profile settings.

But YouTube’s features and potential are deeper and more complex, still. There are plenty of ways to improve your viewing experience with a few more tricks up your sleeve.

Listen On Repeat

Since YouTube still doesn’t have its automatic looping feature on its video, (You can loop by putting your videos into a playlist that repeats, but that’s too time-consuming) several third party sites have stepped up. ListenOnRepeat.com is one of the many sites that repeat videos. When you stumble upon a video that you would like to be looped, a simple URL change will take you to the third party site.

So your YouTube video’s URL looks something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=

Now just add the word “repeat” after the “youtube” and you’re looping!

https://www.youtuberepeat.com/watch?v=

It’s convenient and the site itself is well-designed. You can like, share, add to playlist, etc. as you would on the actual YouTube site. There is a view counter. At the bottom, you’ll notice that there is a “Top Videos” list that ranks all the most repeated videos. Finally, you can also browse videos on Listen On Repeat as you would on YouTube, another convenience.

Video Sharing Start Time

Ever watched a video that has just one really good scene? Want to skip all the parts before that when you share the video with your friends? YouTube has created a tool to let you do just that. Under the Like bar, click on “Share.” You can share on several different platforms, and you should see that you can check the “Start at:” and adjust the start time for the video.

If you’re embedding a video, you will have to adjust the video’s embed code.

Say this is the embed code: http://youtu.be/9bZkp7q19f0

And say you want to start the video at 2 minutes 30 seconds. Simply add “#t=02m30s” to the code:

You’re good to go!

Searching Features

If you know the name of a video but can’t find it no matter how hard you search, there’s a solution for that. Type “allintitle:” before your keyword. What it does is only show videos that have all of the keywords in the video.

You can also narrow your search results by excluding specific keywords. Say you want a funny animal video that doesn’t have “cat” in the title. Just type “funny animals – cat.” The “-” will tell the search program to exclude videos that have “cat” in the title.

Magic Actions

This free app is available in the Chrome Web Store and Firefox’s Softonic store and can be configured to automatically play all your videos in HD. Its magic apps also let you repeat videos, zoom in, play in wide mode, adjust volume with a mouse wheel scroll, block ads, capture video, and much more! It will take some time to get used to all the features, but this app will significantly improve your video-watching experience.

“Feather” Beta

If you have extremely slow internet speeds, then “Feather” Beta will really help. It’s a feature that is dedicated to users like you. It limits the features available to the you and reduces the total amount of bytes downloaded by your browser. It’s still in Beta mode, as you can see, so it might not work for all videos. Either way, it’s a nice work-in-progress that has a lot of potential.

With third party sites and apps as well as secret YouTube tools and features, you can enhance your viewing experience dramatically. Show off your skills the next time you and friends are crowding around your laptop.

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